Dr. S. Ahmad Sajjadi receives the inaugural UCI MIND Joan and Don Beall Scholar Award

Dr. S. Ahmad Sajjadi, associate professor of neurology in the UCI School of Medicine, has been named the inaugural recipient of the UCI MIND Joan and Don Beall Scholar Award. The grant will provide $50,000 a year for five years and is renewable one time. The funds will support Sajjadi’s research into identifying serological and imaging biomarkers that enable diagnosis of a form of degenerative brain disease called limbic-predominant age-related TDP-43 encephalopathy. Common in older adults who develop dementia, LATE’s clinical presentation is very much like Alzheimer’s disease. Currently, it is not possible to diagnose LATE during life, due to its similarity to Alzheimer’s and the lack of specific biomarkers. “This philanthropic award will empower our pursuit of novel lines of biomarker discovery research and support our efforts to generate data that will subsequently allow us to apply for major funding from the NIH and other funding agencies,” Sajjadi said.